


Within the heart of Deimos, and soul of the void

by Vuetyris



Series: Operative Warren - Branch [4]
Category: Warframe
Genre: Adult tenno, Chimeric Warframe, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Heart of Deimos - freeform, The Man in the Wall - freeform, The Void - freeform, Trauma Recovery, Void Echo, concepts of life and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:06:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29746794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vuetyris/pseuds/Vuetyris
Summary: Haunted by the ghosts of his past; hounded by the memories gleaned in dark corners of his life, Warren puts to rest the trauma that has plagued his history. Not to suffocate it, nor ignore it, but to embrace it as one in of himself.
Relationships: Operative Warren/Malaphin, Operator/Warframe
Series: Operative Warren - Branch [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555168
Kudos: 1





	Within the heart of Deimos, and soul of the void

**Author's Note:**

> Operator/Commander Diviyoni-Jacob Warren is the equivalent of 34/35 at this stage in his life.
> 
> -+- Kudos, comments and sharing are encouraged! -+-

A breath held steady, he leans back against a wounded strut.

Blood matted and sweat stained, plying dirty hands back through his curling strands as he stands amidst the infested mess, Warren makes quick work of pulling untamed curls back from his face, tethering it all into a hasty braid wrapped in the embossed fabric strip. The bodies around him writhe in their remnant gasses, the copperous glean of fluids caught in the long tired emergency lights as void steam seeps through the tenno’s restless body. Hip hitched against metal, Warren leans himself away from the orokin frame, clicking through the rhino’s bolt embedded in the back of his spine.

‘How’s the retrieval going, bud?’ parses through the implanted transference bolt, an interlace commune towards the only other amongst the infested hive. It burns beneath his skin - organic circuitry not-quite in tune with the arboriform nerves that interlace Warren’s body. He brushes the pain aside, massaging the healed incision scar as he waits for his partner’s response, reaching for the refurbished dakra well cleaved into an ancient’s copse; the circlet spires glinting with fresh spoiled blood.

Around the towering tenno the infested spores still waver incomplete, the corrosive stench bitter against his void-soiled senses as two-toned sight scouts the expanse of the shattered space. Once a community hall in another life; a well versed nursery in another; it now only cradles hive tumors as the infested corpses still linger in his wake. For now, its silent – silent as the sentry infested lay solemn and dead as the dormant growths around him shivers with each of his clawed steps. A brief glimpse is made of reprise and respect… from the operative tenno to the infested mass brought about by such same serving needs…

Warren can feel the infestation’s distain; it bites in the back of his void-laden throat.

‘Section is clear,’ rolls back through the transference bolt – a connection that only affirms towards one other among the ruins of the orokin vessel.

‘What did you and Lain managed to find?’ He holds tall in the middle of an entry way, his shape overcasting the luminescence that bleeds around the edges into the next room. In search for something, he’s not quite sure.

‘Old transcripts, Chat is unable to decipher them with the routine transcription protocols. All looks to be Imperial orokin.’

Great; Warren’s lip flinches.

‘Anything we’ll need to load up onto the ship?’ He flips the dakra’s edge, wiping the blade along the sides of his legs. ‘Can’t imagine it’s all digital if Lain’s protocol’s can’t decipher it.’

‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’ lightly dances through their interlacing thoughts – a teasing gesture that echoes a tug through their bolts. ‘There’s not much, it’ll be faster than walking.’

A pause marks Warren’s heavy steps, and resumes in a similar beat as he moves to check one more side passage upon the upper galley. Where amongst the dust and decay, he only finds more of the infections masses blocking the way, breaking through the walls and supports as it consumed the ship’s upper cabins.

So, he reaches back – takes a hold of the his partner’ bolt.

His body twilights out in a veil of void energy, passing back through the physical fold as his eyes burn shut, breathing energy smoke as he passes into the prime’s steps.

Where it first comes as a shudder, a muscular stiffness as their nerves merge into one beneath the transference grip – it breaks just as easily as Malaphin steps out of Warren’s ghost, turning in gesture of support as they help break the tenno’s sudden movement. An arm held against arm, hands guiding as the tenno jolts to stop within their tracks – swallowing back the nausea that threatens to take hold, grabbing the warframe’s arm as he leans against his partner. Just as their usual – a momentary pause to assess the fold in the veil.

“Lain managed to scrub the entirety of it?” Warren removes his weight from the warframe’s shoulder as they begin to walk, moving as one towards the items stacked in the corner free of infectious matter.

“Whatever was still left,” Malaphin sighs through their teeth, kneeling alongside Warren as the tenno pulls off his gloves, shoving them into a side pocket of their small rucksack tethered to his thigh. “Lain let me in when they could figure out the sequence for the door – something about it being a burn room, this is all I could find that was still intact.” They offer Warren a cloth from their own mission supplies – to clean the blood and bile from the tenno’s palms, “surprised by the condition, figure it’d be in tatters by now.”

“It figures, have a physical medium to refer to once the coms went dark.” His hands mostly clean of gore, be picks through the case of charts, “easier to torch than to try and wipe it from the manifest.” From what he can glean – escape plans written in scratched Imperial Orokin over star charts, one of what he easily concludes of many to keep in contact with other carriers escaping the sentient surge. “I might be able to figure them out, the matriarch would have some use of these at least.”

“What for?” Malaphin offers a hand, to see the papers.

Warren offers it with a smirk; returning it to the casing when the warframe passes it back to him. “As to why Deimos got abandoned,” he wipes his hand of the infested spores that dust the top. “Come on, let’s get this safe before the moths start eating at the fibers.” Sitting back on his heels, Warren heaves off his disgusting top, shaking himself free of the sickly material so as to not get anything on the delicate cases. Its abandoned beside him as he does his best to clean his chest of any remaining matter, wiping himself down of the gore that leaked through the fabric. He can always replace it – the same can’t be said for such decade old documents.

Heaving one half of the cases against his chest, Malaphin takes the other; carrying them back towards the small hanger in the rear wing of the vessel. In the quiet, Malaphin calls their cephalon.

Outside, their frigate rouses itself from its nest along the side of the orokin derelict, Chatlain beginning the routine protocols of cycling the air and refreshing the sanitizing suppressants to kill any infested spores that may make it aboard as it sings into the hanger – its patchwork seams gleaning in the low lights as the landing gear heaves beneath its weight. The circlet along the rear sits cold above the tenno and warframe pair as they carry the parcels aboard, looming overhead as they strap it down within the frigate’s small cabin decorated with their livelihoods.

Fabric adore the upper alcoves of the space as Warren wrenches the straps into place, locking them up in the sanitizing unit before shoving the door shut – and Chatlain billows the cases with disinfectants, killing the infested spores. Off towards the side Warren can hear the warframe disengage their gear, dropping it dead to the floor at their feet. Eventually, he does the same with his own; cleaning himself of the infested grime as void-steam breathes between his ribs, wiping himself down as Malaphin tends to their dirty laundry. It replaces the cases in the disinfection chamber, set aside to clean by hand once their assignment concludes.

Dropping himself into one of the pilot seats, Warren picks back through his cleaned hair, settling it into a braid as curls still frame the left of his face. “Lain, time to head back to Deimos,” and the hologram display before him surges to life – bathing the space in the amber hue as Malaphin also returns to the front cabin – arms slung around the commander’s neck.

Warren sinks back against it, breathing a sigh as the chimeric warframe’s skull lies against his own. “Going to be a few hours to reach it,” Malaphin mumbles against his throat, tired teeth lying against the furls of cream-white throat vents. “Want to get some rest beforehand?”

A clawed hand curls around the warframe’s crown, easing space between them so a kiss can be placed on the copper-toned leather that makes the excalibur’s frontal visage. Still a long-far cry from the shape that adored them before arboriform consumed their body. The kiss between lips and teeth eventually departs, made with a smile. “We still got some time, wanted to go through some of those documents myself before handing them off to the matriarch of Deimos.”

“What, you think it has something that you wouldn’t get from the last time Lain dove into the ship archives?”

With a lingering sigh, “Lain didn’t have as many aggressive protocols before,” Warren smiles, pulling the chimeric warframe between himself and the frigate’s console. “Besides, all I wanted then was just something, anything that made sense of why. Not how.” Malaphin leans into him as the hands graze along the warframe’s front and throat towards the glint of copper metallics, their foreheads resting close as their breathing merges as one. A prelude interlay of cross communication, where the warframe mirrors tenno – claws pull through Warren’s hair as he recounts in his vivid memory. “My mother was part of the evacuation efforts, if there’s a piece in there of her, I don’t want to be blindsided.”

Malaphin brushes through his hair as their temples depart, “at least look through it somewhere comfortable, starstruck,” and they depart with a gentle kiss. “I’ll be in the den with Cas.”

“Alright,” Warren breathes back, watching as the excalibur departs towards the rear edges of their decorated cabin. Beneath the gentle gaze of the low-light fixtures as the frame-fixed frigate’s engines hum through the expanse. Its low lying energy bleeds amber before him, the holographics shifting from overview positions among the star system to the interactive display as Chatlain brings up the recovered contents from the derelict’s manifest. “Lain, what do you have for me?”

The overview peters out of view, replaced with the slowed barrage of files held within the cephalon’s data core settled within the selfsame vessel’s haul; the mere branch of an immense mind that cradles itself among the distance of the Kepler belt. “Half of them are in rough translations of Imperial to Common speak, but some are voice encoded. I might have managed to break them to accept any voice, but it’s been difficult to work in dialect. Other half are in scramble, doesn’t make sense to my reads.”

“What do you mean by that?” Warren tasks himself into the sections that are partly translated out through the cephalon’s internal translation algorithms, if nothing else to confirm them.

“Word order doesn’t make sense; not in any order my protocols can make out the context.”

“Let me work through these first; then the voice encodes, and we can deal with those afterwards.”

“Understand – want me to assort them by size?”

“I’ll figure out which order to work through them in – just going to gloss through what I can before we hand it off to the Deimos matriarch. She’ll have better use of it than I ever could. It’s all just Orokin ghosts now.” Warren picks through the piece at hand – a map of the system, a recall of once current sentient advancements taken in parts to be ascribed to the sheets laid in the back casings. Pieces of the much larger puzzle – grains of the encroaching sentient horror that had griped the Orokin hearts as they fled their enclaves, abandoned people to die in their retreat in their gilded ships at the tail end of the empire’s collapse.

Like mere lines of simple text make more sense of the wide story – of each engine trouble, the slightest turn of the wheel as crowned ships sailed through the death empty skies. The blare of alarms, the locking of sectors, everything listed in voice of command. For harm reduction, a few lives sacrificed for those more ‘fortunate’ among the once jeweled Assur Orokin. Damage reports left in bitter frank statements; made ever so brief as time went on, its final moments as the infestation took hold. Let it unleash among the remaining upper class that had sat the pestilence disgruntled by the whole affair. Until it entirely consumed them.

They held the traces of phrases Chatlain adds to their own catalogue. Spoken by Warren as he transcribes them aloud; it feels bitter on his tongue as he recalls words for the voice encoded, recalling in the imperial dialect he was raised on as a child. Words for the mundane made the same as distain, cruelty made numb into words like inconvenience, annoyance; words that disregarded subjugation and obedience as the sole rule. Hours, for hours he speaks with the cephalon about the contents of what they’ve found, the horrors in which Warren had endured – his bitter hatred it was encouraged by ones that had bore him.

In the end, Warren’s answer of how is clear; and it brings the same old emptiness he has long assumed. Had long endured the first time he stepped out onto the Assur’s infested barren struts when he was but a teenager. Alone…

The chimera’s arms wrap around his shoulders, catching him as he stares empty into the inner shell of the frigate’s front cabin. “We don’t need Arali,” the warframe, breathes against his scalp, “come to rest, you’ve done all you can with the documents.”

“Alright, fine,” Warren pulls a hand over, palm gleaning over the excalibur’s badly mended crest, “just need to send ‘Mother’ the information.”

“If not, I’m pulling you back here,” Mal chuffs, departing with a press of their bared teeth to the curls. “Don’t make me get Cas.”

There’s a brief chuff, “fine,” and watches as Malaphin departs.

Chatlain dials through the codex, “I’ve sent the basic information, and she should answer back shortly.”

Quietly, Warren waits alone.

Arms crossing chest, he waits.

Staring out against the panes before him as the refurbished frigate’s engines hum; it’s not the fastest method of travel, by a mile. But he needs the time to think in times like this, picking through his brain on how to respond.

Ignoring the glinting gaze from the low-lit shadows.

A piece just like himself, though carved from clavicle through sternum, drenched in void bile as the echo sits in the corner, watching him as he leans back into the seat.

He’s gotten used to it.

“Ayatan!” Warren flinches. “Your servant brought me the good news – I assure it was no trouble retrieving such curious information?”

“Yes, it has the entire course for the Martian fleet and the Assur mother vessel. There is the records in digital and physical – we are currently in route.”

“Excellent! Any compensation will be sorted shortly –“

“The heart,” Warren interrupts, stern even as he can feel his echo’s eyes laid on him, haunting and cold as he stares against the remnants of the holographic display. “You were going to let me and my partner see the heart.”

“… right,” the matriarch of Deimos corrects. “By blood, you wouldn’t see it otherwise.”

“We’ll speak on it later when it’s delivered. Still 10 hours out.”

The connection closes, mutual in kind.

Warren heaves a sigh, hand pulling through his hair as he lies back against the pilot seat with eyes held shut… and there’s a pause, a glance made to where he could feel his echo waiting, watching. Gone.

“Void-damned thing…” the tenno breathes as he rises to his feet. His claws clicking resound against the floor as he makes his way around the front half of the cabin, stepping out of the reach of the makeshift dividers that hold their equipment and brews. The storage made of revitalizing energy that both tenno and warframe sate themselves on the long journeys through the system of sol.

He drops down beside where the excalibur lays, half covered with fabric and headcase hooded with a shroud. “Arali again?” They barely move from where they sit, an arm extended out to pull the tenno close. Warren relents, curling himself up beside the chimeric frame, pulling another of the myriad of cloth over them and the divot in the floor.

“Yeah,” Warren sighs, nestling himself against Malaphin, curling one arm around the excalibur’s waist before situating himself further down, using their lap as a pillow. “They’ve been coming with headaches now, felt them standing while I was talking with the matriarch.” A sigh breathes through his form, curling against the excalibur’s recumbent frame.

Malaphin joins him, lying lax in the nest of pillows and blankets. To where they both lie beneath the overhead lights of the frigate’s fragile interior, decorated with collected items as above, in the alcove that holds their personal items, sits the curl of a scarf and a long forsaken arm – Warren glances at it, shielding himself against Malaphin’s frame as claws pull through his hair. His sight catching the glint of the shed Umbra’s crown, metallics shown in the reflective light that dances above. “We should be able to enter the chamber once we reach Deimos,” he breathes, resting his head on the warframe’s chest, steel-blue sight lingering to close as the yellow somatic still painfully hums in his sight.

Arali; again.

Following the tenno’s sight, Malaphin sees nothing across the chamber of their frigate, an empty space filled in Warren’s vision of his other self. The imprint he had made in the void.

Plying fingers through the tussle curls, the excalibur hums, “frequent, huh.”

“Mhm,” Warren sighs, preoccupying himself with the texture of the warframe’s mended form. One comprised of many as he pieces through the junctions of parts he helped pull free, of the corpses he had amended to the excalibur’s body to give them newfound life. To the familiar hand that holds his body tight – and his fingers lace with the excalibur’s own.

“It could happen again,” the fabric of Malaphin’s facial shroud tickles Warren’s scalp, “with Arali, and the heart.”

“I know,” Warren rests into the excalibur’s palms, narrowing himself to find rest on their easing chest. “That won’t happen again,” memories fog of possession, helplessness, of the warframe’s weight crushing as he finally shook the echo from him with gagging coughs. It’s only brief, but it draws him cross, curling himself into his partner’s frame. “I know the signs, and how to distance myself,” he eventually settles, arms curling around the warframe’s frame. “Let’s just, get some sleep for now, worry about it all later once we finally reach Deimos, Mal.”

Claws draw through the loose braid and the cresting strands, holding through to cup against a gentle cheek as the other side snarls with their dark scars. Dark gums bore against their toned turquoise. “Only if I can stay by your side, startstuck, I don’t want to lose you to the rasps of the lohk gate ghost.”

Warren curls against him, throwing the blankets around them as the lights overhead sit low. Where moments are slow, soft beneath the amber glow as a hand guides the warframe’s features over to meet the tenno’s own.

“I promise,” breathes into a kiss.

Questing arms of deimos mounds search the space around the ruined remains, tendrils bleeding infectious gasses in the direction of the humming frigate. Its colors bleed into the gradient skies, the worn metal circlet arches catching the solar shine before it begins to dip beneath the fleshcraft horizon, sinking into the expanse of the necralisk. Among others it begins to settle, landing gear scratching into the ground as tenno crafts shoot into the skies above, weaving taunts among the delicate deimos branches. A jolting landing all the same for them, the enigmatic engines spooling quiet as the bright glint of the refurbished orokin exterior is barely worth a glance in the cavalcade of the tenno crafts. Expensive hulls sing in the quiet light of the overseeing bulk, lingering above as others wander between the port and the inner chambers.

Within, Warren and Malaphin secure their moa for the transport, the little patchworked thing whirling and chirping as they strap the containers to the attachment to their rear carriage. It clicks as Warren holds it by the turret attachment, stroking the tactile sensors as it wiggles annoyed. The chatter continues long after the load is secured, dancing itself around the warframe as Warren checks their messages – Chatlain transferring the files in the manner that the Entrati can make use of.

“Baby, cakes, settle,” Malaphin chides the moa, kneeling beside it, gently holding it into a crouch as its mechanics wiggle in excitement, shaking and rattling the load set on its carriage.

“Won’t damage them if they rattle around,” Warren smirks, throwing on a grab that shrouds his face, affixing his gloves firmly to deal with the bitter cold outside the bay door. “Shouldn’t take more than ten to hand them over,” he welcomes the excitable moa, giving its turret a gentle pet.

“What about the matriarch?”

A disgruntled sigh, Warren walks over to meet the warframe in the rear of the cabin, “shouldn’t take much to persuade her, now. We already got the logs. She seems to weigh my mother as someone important,” comes as a grunt, pulling a mask up to his face to save him from the bitter cold.

‘Her being Orokin?’ their conversation continues through the interlace of the bolts as the bay door of the frigate drops, letting the deimos musk sweep over them as the pressure between normalizes.

‘What else,’ Warren continues, the moa hot on his digitigrade heels as he and Malaphin walk side to side, ‘only reason I could wager why she would take interest in the Assur. Only found it because I was looking for any trace of my past.’ His movements are steady, even as he towers over the other tenno and their warframe companions; Warren’s void twisted cloaked body a stark contrast to the vibrant hues they maneuver towards where the matriarch of Deimos waits, speaking with another.

He watches quietly as Gomaitru talks out mission details with another crew of tenno – far younger than himself he wagers as their warframes lie pristine, their colors vibrant among the dreary lighting of the necralisk’s inner sanctum. A few years into the practice, he wonders, far removed from the standards of the order that now leads the Lotus abandoned tenno. Still crafting new strains of warframes; it makes him feel old, worn out – his grip on his biceps tighten, a fringe of relief. That they aren’t going through what he had.

“Oh, you’ve brought me the cases, Ayatan?”

The good side of Warren’s face twitches, unseen beneath his respirator. “Yes, I’ve managed to transcribe a portion of it – they’re just physical records of the data my cephalon has transferred towards your own network.” He glances over – Malaphin’s unloading the cases.

“You’ve read them?” The orokin leans upon her blossoming mass, head held in a curious look as chin rests upon curled fingers. “Aren’t they out of reach of your servant’s sensors?”

“-They are-,” Warren hates his voice, “-but I remember enough to make it out on my own unassisted. Mistress.-” It feels bitter on his tongue, a dagger digging through his palms and wrists so as he can only clutch out the rise of anxiety. “-As assumed, the Assur took flight far before contacting Deimos.-” He holds back his own resentment, his disdain for speaking the language that allowed him to endure torment for the good of those who cared nothing for their people.

It does, in any case, perk the matriarch’s interest, taking the cases into her own curious mass before returning – the cases now no longer to be seen. “-I see-,” her voice is in a cadence, “-now, you wanted to see the heart?-”

“-Yes-.”

There is a moment of pause, a query held transposed before she gestures towards Malaphin and the awaiting Moa. “-As long as that old thing isn’t going to follow.-“

“-I need them with me, to face an echo of lohk.-”

“-Then why need something that old, when you can take one of my husband’s necramechs.-”

“-I’m not going there to fight,-” Warren’s voice lingers into a sigh, “-you promised an audience with the heart if I found the Assur’s manifest and the route after the collapse. It’s all I’m asking for.-”

A disengaging shrug, “-fine, but let my husband know what you’re doing first.- Oh, Tenno! You’ve returned,” and she brushes Warren and Malaphin off for the next.

‘What did she call me,’ Malaphin glances over as they step around the next in the storm of an audience the matriarch has.

‘Just ‘an old thing’, she doesn’t have high regards for anything that isn’t her or her father’s work,’ Warren returns the look, snapping his fingers to regain their Moa’s attention. ‘I’ll go talk with her husband, he’s a lot easier to work things out with. I’ll meet you back at the ship.’

A curious look follows him as he departs, shrouded by the excalibur’s facial covers.

It’s not long before Warren returns, stepping his way around the sleeping moa as he returns to the cabin. “Good news, Vilcor has no problem with you entering the heart’s vault.”

From where they’re leaning back in the opposing pilot seat, Malaphin glances over. “You talked him into it?”

A short head shake; Warren overlooks the holographic display before him. “Talked him out of issuing me a necramech to come along.”

“Ah,” Malaphin’s remark is stark.

As the frigate’s engines sing to life, lifting them from the port, Warren leans back into his seat, pulling the respirator from his face to uncover the scars that crosses his left jaw. Where his teeth lie stark against his void corroded flesh, inked black as his skin is scourged with void corruption up and around his void tainted sight. Its glow pervades their conversation as they watch the landscape around them in the safety of their cabin, following the route leading them towards where the heart of deimos beats safe beneath the fleshcraft plains.

“I just… don’t like them,” breaks the silence, Warren shrugging himself down into the cushions of the pilot seat. “Glad they didn’t catch on, the necramechs. At least if someone’s turned and dies as a warframe… that’s it, there’s no coming back after a full-body death. At least, not without the infestation,” his breathing sighs, “but, to use long dead remains to animate a suit of Orokin armor, it doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know… you could escape the orokin in death only to, end up like that. That’s no way to treat the dead,” he slouches, pulling his hands through auburn curls with an aggressive sigh. Annoyed and over stimulated.

“Arali?”

Warren only barely nods, a glance made over towards the crease of shadows. “They’ve been watching me since I finished talking to Vilcor, was just sitting behind you a moment ago.” Fingers pinch at his temple, massaging the pounding in his skull.

Diverting the conversation – “you worry about the lack of consent used to create them?”

“Yeah – there’s no way we can know if they were volunteered, induced, who knows. Just can never really trust any Orokin tech given the past few years. And, well, everything else,” the tenno breathes, eyeing the display before them as Chatlain maneuvers the frigate into a descent. “Make sure Babycakes is latched down, don’t want her to get lost while we’re gone.” Following the movement of the craft, Warren steels himself as it makes landfall, picking his respirator back from the console.

In the well set walls they can hear the bleating thumps; the gentle resounds of the mended heart bleeding beneath the walls and beyond the tatters of degrading infectious tissue. Marks of extermination mar the walls and growths along the step-paths, remnants of battles past littered with the hulking corpses already in the process of being reconstituted to the hive that breathes around them. Growths hang from the walls above as they move quickly from the entry of the exclusive vault; Warren lets Malaphin handle the Deimos patriarch, guiding them down towards the cavernous bowels towards the core. Pieces of necramech litters the floors around them – long dead things Warren can feel the tethers to reaching out, for salvations as the empty husks cry to be made whole, stuck among the disgust as the infestation crawls along the once pristine orokin floors.

Tethers that are far hard for Warren to ignore – brushing the curious connections aside before he moves through his own echo to meet the excalibur’s side. It merely brings him the pounding of a headache, the rush of nausea as though he had jumped 5km through the void, the shakes that would reach the extent of his exertions – he can handle it, holding onto the warframe’s hand as he shoves down the physical reactions. It’s not easy – never easy – to force it down, stubborn in refusal to let the sensation pass as they make it through another lock gate, locked in by Vilcor as they make it another chamber closer to the void-fueled heart.

And, in time, the heart beats before them.

Curtained by the visage of the void gate, crawled and coveted in orokin golds, the organ gives a resounding thump that echoes through the room – visceral, to an extent, as it resounds each beat into their chest. Meeting the warframe’s mended heart as one – and is met by Warren’s malformed façade of his internals, organs twisted by arboriform and void. Damaged, but not in disrepair, it still echoes in his chest. Off beat. Out of sync.

Almost comforting.

Pulling the respirator from his face, Warren breathes the void speckled air, the wisps of void energy meets his own void-twisted exhales that draws from his throat and the void corrupted ribs beneath his top. Drawn in deep as he can feel the void reaching out for him beyond the gate, weaving past the heart and down into his chest as the void shifts lurid and calm… he can feel it reaching for his thoughts, claws digging into his mind as he hears Malaphin behind him – a palm pressed to his back. “Alright,” sighs as void smoke wisps in his breath, glancing back, “time to give it a shot.”

Taking a step down, he follows the warframe’s movements as he sits near the end descent of the steps, far before the overhanging heart as it continues its otherworldly beats above. Tossing his equiptment aside, making himself comfortable between the excalibur’s knees, Warren lies back into Malaphin’s chest, letting his arms lie lax over the volt thighs he had long affixed to chimeric body that now holds him calm. With every breath, each exhale, he watches as the drenching blue and white seeps before him, beyond him as Malaphin makes themselves comfortable, adjusting to the tenno’s wait bearing on their lap.

Claws hold through his hair, settling his head back and against.

Warren looks up, to where the shroud hides Malaphin’s features from the gaze of the void.

“Ready, sweet?” they rumble, cradling Warren’s head against their chest, lying back so the slouch of a bag cushions their winglets that flickers with each beat of the deimos heart.

Warren nods… reaching up to stroke the faceless scalp above him. “Is the chamber sealed?”

“Yes; it will stay that way until we’re both the same again.”

“And if I don’t make it back, if Arali takes my form?”

“Then it will stay as such – Vilcor has been interested in trying to rig his necramechs.”

“Ah,” sighs in full, Warrens eyes lying shut as he looks back to the heart, as his arm curls to rest on the excalibur’s thigh. “So, if it takes me –”

“I’ll stay until it takes me,” Malaphin leans in, teeth plating a kiss on the tenno’s scalp. “Just as I promised,” Warren can feel the smile chase through the transference, muted beneath the gaze of the void and the thump of the Deimos heart.

He can’t help but to smile, pulling the excalibur down into a kiss.

“Even if I’m nothing but an aboriform heart?” he queries.

“Then I’ll let you consume me,” Malaphin jokes, running the hand made of himself and Cas through the tenno’s hair. “Then it’ll be the three of us, together.” Once more, a kiss plates itself center.

With a hearty snort, returning his sights back to the swirling enigma of the void gate before them, Warren breathes another exhale of void steam. Where it whispers around them. “Just, hold onto me, Mal, whatever happens.”

“Don’t worry, starstruck,” the excalibur rumbles, settling Warren’s head in their palms, “I got you.”

Relief whispers through Warren as he can feel the heart beat firmly into his chest, as he bathes beneath the light of the void as he lets his sight begin to drift, become lazy as he lets himself be drawn to the whispering rasps beyond his own comprehensions. Sight somatic and void, they begin to fog in his own thoughts, breathing steady and deep as his body draws lax, almost limp as his sightline still remains on the void – letting himself sink into its embrace as the heart beats in his chest as one. A shape made astral beneath his own understanding, a mere ghost that walks the physical plane between his body and the swirl of the distant clouds.

Warren looks back on himself, on his empty body and the waiting prime cradling his head, letting his empty eyes stare deep into the void half-lid and glazed.

Not asleep, nor dead; walking the margin between as he turns back to the void gate, to the draw that begins to sing in the background of his lucid thoughts. Towards the gentle hum of a voice much like his own, a shape very much like his own body before he purged himself into the void; before it twisted him inside and out, charged him through and through with the drastic changes that char his body and skin. A shape once of his own, carved with a cadaver incision, drenched in the oil ilk as he crosses the veil, crosses the gap between the world and void as spectral thoughts resound with the dulcet tones of the enigmatic void.

‘so,’ he can hear himself, he can feel himself as the echo and him become one, movements mirrored as they stand apart yet together, one in the same. A past and present memory saturated with the desire for an end. ‘It’s come to this,’ reverbs in the distance of his mind, voice drawn to a drawl as remnants of orokin tongue lingers at the ends of his words. A vocal scar that cuts through the fragments of himself, cuts him in very much like the echo that stands before him. ‘as it always would,’ him and himself speak as one.

It was always him, he has known. An imprint he left on the void so many years ago.

‘There is always a way out,’ speaks in his own, repeated in imperial orokin; angry, wounded. Snarled in the words he can only faintly recall as the echo lashes out, scratching through his astral space as the pain of his past filters through – the zariman, the abuse, being dunked into the pod the first time and into the last. The pain that tore through him in every death, endured only to be subjected to the next, and the next as each body he held was cut down, pulled from him only to be left empty and alone.

Painful memories, biting through his thoughts as he endures the updraft, the needles drawn to his throat as his echo is upon him, scratching into his mouth brutalized by the orokin handlers that made him sedentary. Hopeless beneath the orokin rule. Angry. Betrayed. That they deserved nothing more than the fires that torched them, the sentients that laid waste to the empire and the infestation that had followed to consume them, brought to ruin almost everything that was left of the empire before the last sentient finally fell silent. For the system to fall dark as the last scavengers struggled in the twilight aftermath.

That it was deserved to happen again – the complicit has been made anew.

Warren rejects it; and embraces the lingering anger and pain.

‘There is always a way out,’ he once more repeats, holding around himself and the echo in a singular hug as his sight draws dim. ‘The rulers are long dead, and the orokin are just a shell of their former self, those that are left.’

‘They made u/yo/s a weapon in their brutal game,’ his own voice screechs, eyes wild wide as the anger resumes a new – bitter, hateful, mournful of the life that never was meant to be, to fight off the sentients in shell body after shell body, a child forced to die again and again, to be forced to endure death after death with the only salvation be the bitter cold of an isolation chamber. Put away until his energy recharged, void-crafted wounds healed in an overstressed body.

‘One of many,’ the sensation of heat bleeds over him – rage, anguishing as the pain surges through, relived in a brief moment to draw the curling of the mere motion of bile turmoil. Trauma that resounds as his voice draws numb – muted as his own voice screams incoherent, angry that he’s had to go through so much, endured while others shook off the pain of being a mere tool of the Orokin to exert their dominion. Before the collapse, during the collapse, twilighted out to only be brought back to more pain and suffering in a world that held him as an enemy, to obey the command of others. Why should they still live while others died? Shouldn’t they bare the same treatment as he – endure the burn of the void and bring the ruin to wipe the slate completely clean?

He only keeps hold; embracing that same anger that burned in him so long ago.

‘And there’s not others that deserve to live? To protect others so they won’t endure something that u/yo/s have?’

‘Yes’ he answers himself.

‘Scratching at the scab does nothing to properly heal,’ his voice dawns as one, ‘fighting for a better tomorrow is worth more than a comfortable today – to sit in sorrow helps none but seed the same anger the Orokin brewed in their salted pots. Ignoring others for a selfish desire to be the one in the right – to burn others to right upon others who’ve not done wrong.’ His voice is calm, and gentle.

Cradling that burning hatred, letting it draw cool against the desire to be heard. Not extinguished, no… to nurture into something calm. A fire that has long lingered and burned nearly all that drew close, a fear to be harmed again that burns tapestries that held dream and desires for another life. A cloth embossed with calm blue in his mind, drawn through his fingers as tears drift beyond the reach of his sight.

A desire reaches to hold them, to wipe them clear – his body doesn’t move. Stuck in the firmament of the void as the echo still holds him tight, almost restrictive as he cradles the hurt and the pain sunk deep into his own chest. Its heavy, almost painful as the void begins to burn upon his skin, crawling into his sight as he cannot keep them shut among the reaches of the void. It crawls upon his skin, body and void, affixing his echo back into one, mending the wounded shell back into the rightful moment in his thoughts of the one that endured full body deaths.

Of the kid that went through so much hate and torment piloting warframes to their deaths.

Choking, gagging; Malaphin holds his head still against their chest, cradling as his body shudders and gasps, choking on void dust as he curls for comfort, barely pulling himself into the embrace as nausea takes his empty stomach, retching gasses as his fingers dig against the warframe’s garb. They pull around them tight, burying his face into their chest as his voice shudders between incoherent and slurred Orokin, cursing beneath his breath as the void still stings his sight.

Malaphin does what they can, cradling Warren as the tenno fights to get grounded, shaking between their clawed grip as they pull the tenno close. “Easy,” whispers as a clawed palm pulls through Warren’s hair, brushing aside as the bonespurs of his left shudder beneath the energy load, billowing void smoke as Warren fights for his own breath. “I’m here, Divi,” coos as they hold the tenno gentle, trying to guide Warren to lie face-to-face. “I’m here.”

“Fuck,” Warren belches steam, hacking void particles like it was fluid, “Mal,” he groans, fists balling against the warframe, his head resting upon palms. His hands shiver – his entire body shivers as the chill of the void breathes over his skin, as the corruption draws over him once more. “The void,” he can barely make out in tenno dialect, “it’s on me, isn’t it.” Changing him… repairing him as it lets his body synchronize with the parts that were once left in the void – blunt fingers pulling around the warframe’s center.

And all Malaphin can do is watch, cradling Warren’s head.

“It’s in my eyes,” his voice shivers, traced with the echo tears. “Please, tell me what’s happening,” nearly sobs, self-contained merely by the tenno’s annoyance.

“It’s…” Malaphin can barely make out as Warren’s sight states voided, pools of white sunk amongst a sea of black. One of many changes that undergoes as Warren holds to them tight; the wounding on the side of his face begins to flake away, just as his skin begins to change, the tone carrying across his face, over his arm.

“Mal, I can see into the void,” barely breathes into a whisper, anger bitten back as eyes draw tight, snarled as he holds himself close to the excalibur. And then the change is gone – blinded by the bright light of the void as the heart beats through his mind. “Fuck sake,” he barely makes out, exhausted by the whole affair. His hands hold worry, pushing them beneath himself as he lets his sight adjust – looking to the prime with twin steel-grey.

“You’ve adhered to it,” Malaphin holds his head, supports him as he leans against the warframe. “You’re back, Divi,” breaks a small grin – relief seeping through the transference.

“Let’s… get back to the ship,” Warren grumbles, curling himself into the excalibur, exhaustion tearing through his void-stunned nerves. “Call Vilcor, and unlock the door,” barely grumbles as he tries to push himself to kneel, body shaking under the exertion.

“Sink into me, Divi,” Malaphin holds him steady – a suggestion Warren can barely ignore.

Letting his grip go, Warren falls into Malaphin.

Their bodies become one as his sight merges with Malaphin’s own, his numb nerves quiet under the excalibur’s own movements as he becomes a passenger to his partner’s body.

“Vilcor,” Warren speaks through Malaphin, taking over communication control as Malaphin collects their things. “We’re done with the heart; my warframe is carrying us back.”

Back in the embrace of their frigate Warren drops himself out of Malaphin’s shadow, stumbling back as his legs fail him, landing into the cushions of the alcove as Malaphin tends to their items. Quiet, he can only watch as static still crawls through his nerves, biting through as the changes to his body have not yet made connection with his brain. Inconsistencies that draw him queasy, holding a pillow over his face as the structure of the cabin spins in his double-sight – physical and void, tasked between as images bleed between one and the other.

Beneath him, against his spine, he can feel the frigate hum to life.

“Lain is taking us back to the Kelper,” Malaphin drops beside him, offering an arm to the dizzy tenno.

Warren accepts it, pulling himself to lie against his partner.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Like a focused void storm,” he grunts, burying himself into the warframe’s skin.

“Arali’s taken care of?”

A pause, a momentary thought of them being one and the same. “Yeah,” the tenno sighs, leaning into the palm that cradles his head.

“That snarl is gone,” presses a tease, yet sincere. “your face, it’s been given back.”

Warren, saying nothing, leans into the cradle, eyes lied partial.

Nothing else to say, nothing else to give.

“Yeah,” smiles as Warren presses into a kiss, complete against the grin of teeth as he cradles himself into the warframe’s embrace.


End file.
